Daunting challenge for Moon at 3rd summit with Kim

SEOUL — The first interKorean summit of 2018, a sunny spectacle in late April, reduced war fears on the peninsula. The second, an emergency one in May, helped ensure a historic meeting between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and President Trump came off.

Now, at his third summit with Kim this week in Pyongyang, South Korean President Moon Jae-in faces his toughest challenge yet: delivering something substantive that goes beyond previous vague statements on denuclearization and helps to get U.S.-North Korea talks back on track.

Negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang have sputtered in recent weeks, raising doubts about whether Kim is truly willing to relinquish his nuclear arsenal and putting pressure on Moon to broker progress once again.

The result will probably be a crucial indicator of how the larger nuclear negotiations with the United States will proceed. Moon will try to get Kim to express more clearly that he’s prepared to abandon his nuclear weapons, which could create momentum for a second Kim-Trump summit. Whether Moon succeeds, fails or falls somewhere in between, the third inter-Korean summit could help answer a persistent question: When Kim says he supports the “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” what does he mean?

Moon heads to Pyongyang on Tuesday facing lingering questions over his claim that Kim, during his conversations with South Korean officials, has privately expressed a genuine interest in dealing away his nuclear weapons and missiles.

The wave of optimism that surrounded the first two interKorean summits in April and May and the Singapore meeting between Trump and Kim in June conveniently overlooked disagreements about what exactly Kim had committed to.

“The third summit will bring more clarity to what North Korea means with the complete denuclearization of the peninsula,” said Kim Taewoo, former president of Seoul’s government-funded Korea Institute for National Unification. “If the North has been negotiating with goodwill all this time, Moon will be able to return with good results. But, regrettably, I see that possibility as low.”

He said it will be crucial for Moon to get Kim Jong Un to give a clearer signal that he is willing to accept credible actions toward denuclearization, such as providing a detailed description of North Korea’s nuclear program, a key first step toward inspecting and dismantling of it.

Moon, the son of North Korean war refugees, is eager to keep the nuclear diplomacy alive, not just to keep a lid on tensions, but also to advance his ambitious plans for engagement with the North, including joint economic projects and reconnecting inter-Korean roads and railways.

Kim Tong-Hyung is an Associated Press writer.